Washington, DC — The Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, NJ has become a flashpoint in recent days.
Hunger strikes by hundreds of detained immigrants are drawing attention to the dangerous conditions inside. State and local elected representatives are being refused their right to enter the facility to provide oversight and accountability. And clashes outside as federal officers have tear-gassed bystanders and protestors, including a sitting U.S. Senator Andy Kim
Delaney is not an isolated case; the tragic increase in self-harm incidents within immigration detention centers is a direct result of the Trump administration’s ongoing mass deportation agenda. According to NBC News, “more than 1,000 emergency requests over the last year made from six immigration detention centers around the country, and one of 28 involving serious incidents of self-harm…”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Delaney Hall is a chilling flashback to the kinds of violence and chaos Americans have witnessed in LA, Chicago and of course, Minneapolis. It is clear that under this administration, nothing has changed and unspeakable cruelty is being normalized, and basic accountability is being ignored.
In Delaney Hall and at ICE camps across the country, detainee suicide rates are soaring, and basic healthcare, sanitation and food are poor to non-existent. While the administration has recently de-emphasized the in-your-face, city-by-city deployments that generated fierce backlash in Minneapolis and elsewhere, they haven’t de-escalated their cruelty or vision of mass detentions and mass deportations. In fact, the Administration is making plans to scale up and are asking Congress to fund tens of billions in new dollars to fuel ICE. This is just another blank check on top of the windfall from last year’s big ugly bill and without any of the basic oversight components that the majority of American people are demanding.
We offer our support to the families, activists and elected officials helping to spotlight the cruelty and conditions inside Delaney Hall, Dilley and around the country. We stand with the majority of Americans calling for a better way forward to modernize our immigration system. What we are witnessing and experiencing is shameful.”
